These grants were announced by the Georgian National Film Center on 22 December 2017.

 

Starting on March 15th, Vilnius Film Festival Kino Pavasaris will welcome notable guests, including a Lithuanian-born The Florida Project star Bria Vinaite, Swedish queer rapper Silvana Imam, American director Sean Baker and the leading Israeli director Amos Gitai. The festival is reducing the number of programmes and is set to visit 11 Lithuania’s cities.

The festival’s carefully curated programme will bring last year’s outstanding films to Lithuanian audiences, including Luca Guadagnino‘s ambivalent tale of melancholy and love Call Me By Your Name, exceptionally made Loving Vincent, world's first fully painted feature. Its directors Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman will come to Vilnius to meet with festival viewers.

The list of festival guests includes Swedish queer rapper and human rights activist Silvana Imam. Born to a Lithuanian mother and Syrian father, she took the music world by storm with her feminist songs and radical attitude. Her journey is explored in the documentary Silvana.

Lithuanian-born Instagram-activist-turned-actress Bria Vinaite, together with director Sean Baker will present The Florida Project. A socially-conscious drama was praised by critics and viewers as one of the most important films of 2017. It will be the first time when Vinaite will visit her childhood country after her international success.

Vilnius IFF audience will also have a chance to meet the leading Israeli director Amos Gitai whose newest feature West of The Jordan River explores what he calls a ‘harassment‘ of peace activists in Israel by the country’s government.

New films that have competed at this year’s Berlinale were added to the Kino Pavasaris programme. Kim Ki-duk’s horror film Human, Space, Time and Human,  Polish director’s Małgorzata Szumowska’s critical yet funny look at Polish society in satirical drama Mug, which has been awarded with Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize.

Other notable screenings will include Valerie Fari‘s and Jonathan Dayton‘s comic drama with Emma Stone and Steve Carell Battle of the Sexes, and Thierry Fremaux’s, director of Lyon's Lumiere Institute, fresh take on short films by the Lumiere Brothers in Lumiere!

The 23rd Vilnius Film Festival will welcome the FIPRESCI jury. For the first time, members of this prestigious association will visit Lithuania and award one film from the Baltic region their prize.

This year Kino Pavasaris introduced changes to the festival’s programme. Seventeen programmes have been merged into five: Festivals’ Favourites’, Critics’ Choice, Masters, Discoveries and European Debut Competition. Another new addition to the festival are the special screenings where feature films are accompanied by a short film. For instance, Xavier Legrand‘s Custody, chosen to open the festival, will be screened together with his short film Just Before Losing Everything nominated for an Academy Award in 2013.

This year there will be 12 Lithuanian films premiering in Kino Pavasaris. The entries include acknowledged director’s Giedrė Beinoriūtė’s newest feature dramaBreathing into Marble, based on an award-winning novel. There will be short films from an emerging young generation of directors competing in Student Filmand Short Competition programmes.

After eight years, the festival will again be closed with a local director’s film. The documentary poem The Ancient Woods by Mindaugas Survila was chosen for this occasion. The hypnotising documentary about Lithuanian woods took 10 years to complete and received great reviews after its world premiere at IDFA, the leading documentary film festival held in Amsterdam.

Sales of the tickets to the 23rd edition of Vilnius IFF Kino Pavasaris start today.

 

 

Europa Distribution and Cartoon celebrate this year a partnership established in 2009 to facilitate independent distributors to attend one of largest and more renown pitching & co-pro forum for animated feature films in Europe. More than 40 Europa Distribution members will be in Bordeaux from the 7th to 10th March for the 20th edition of Cartoon Movie. This year for the first time Europa Distribution will also host a distribution workshop at the very beginning of the event.

The workshop, dedicated exclusively to the members of the association, will take place on Wednesday 7th March. It will be a unique occasion for Europa Distribution members to exchange experiences and information about their releases of different animation films and compare the various strategies adopted on the same title and the different outcomes on different territories.

Among the titles to be discussed there are: Ballerina (Eric Summer, Éric Warin - France), My life as a Zucchini, (Claude Barras - Switzerland) Richard the Stork (Toby Genkel, Reza Memari – Germany, Belgium) and Zombillenium (Arthur de Pins, Alexis Ducord – France). The workshop will be concluded with an open discussion about the general experience of the distributors with the release of animation features. How to release adult animation and how to target the right audience? Is dubbing always the best option? How to guide young audiences towards different sort of animation styles that look less familiar to them?

Europa Distribution will continue the discussion with its members about the specific challenges of releasing and promoting independent films in Europe with its next workshops and panels in Sofia, Karlovy Vary, Haugesund, San Sebastian, Rome and Amsterdam and throughout the year participating to conferences and meetings with distributors and other parts of the value chain.

 

The Czech film Fund announced the results on 28 February 2018.

 

Now running into its second year, the European Genre Forum has selected eight exciting projects to take part in the 2018 training cycle, starting on April 16th, 2018.

The 2018 project selection spreads geographically well over Europe, reaching as far as Israel. The stories reflect a wide variety of fantastic cinema, amongst them tales of witchcraft, nightmarish relationships, supernatural stories, plagues and mountain trips gone wrong… We are very please to officially announce the list of the 2018 EGF selected projects.

The Selected Projects

BIRDS OF A FEATHER - Dir. Hanna Bergholm (Finland)

FINGERNAIL - Dir. Boaz Armoni (Israel)

NO MAN’S LAND - Dir. Mel Piper (Germany)

SPINNERS - Dir. Ivars Tontegode (Latvia)

THE BASE - Dir. Alex Madia Levi (United Kingdom)

THE DESCENDANT - Dir. Colinda Bongers (The Netherlands)

THE HIKE - Dir. Daniel Rübesam (Germany)

THE PLAGUE DOCTOR - Dir. Michael O’Connor (Germany)

Click here for more information about the projects

The selected projects will have the opportunity to attend three talent labs over the course of the year 2018. The Director’s Lab takes place in Amsterdam during the Imagine Film Festival, from 16 to 20 April 2018. The Producer’s Lab takes place in Zagreb during Fantastic Zagreb, from 4 to 8 July 2018. The Packaging Lab takes place in Tallinn during PÖFF, in the final week of November 2018.

The training cycle aims to not only boost the selected film projects, but to also give an invaluable knowledge to the participants, offer new insights and to facilitate professional networking. During the three talent labs, participants will be able to discuss their project with script consultants, learn about the different aspects of (co-) production, sales and packaging from Industry professionals. Mentoring sessions with established genre filmmakers, crowd funders, legal experts, VR and AR experts, and case studies of recent, successful films complete the programme.

About the European Genre Forum

The European Genre Forum (EGF) is an educational event jointly organized by Fantastic Zagreb, Imagine Film Festival (Amsterdam), Black Nights FF and its Industry platform Industry@Tallinn&; Baltic Event (Tallinn) and Screen Division (Paris). The programme is supported by the Creative Europe – MEDIA programme of the European Union.

Project Coordinator
Annick Mahnert This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

 

 

Zagreb, 25 February 2018 – The 14th edition of ZagrebDox International Documentary Film Festival opened tonight in five theatres at Kaptol Boutique Cinema. In the upcoming seven days, festival visitors will be able to enjoy a total of 125 films covering a broad spectrum of topics and taking us to all the four corners of the world. The festival opened with the film Over the Limit by Polish director and festival guest Marta Prus, and the audience was greeted by the festival director Nenad Puhovski and mayor of Zagreb Milan Bandić, who also officially opened the festival.

In his speech Nenad Puhovski pointed out that ZagrebDox is a festival promoting and celebrating diversity, primarily the creative diversity of authorial aesthetics, as well as the diversity of people before the camera. Whenever I am asked if ZagrebDox has a special theme on a particular year, my answer is always – yes, 120 of them. ZagrebDox is a festival starting from the point that we are all different, special and belonging to a minority group which should be protected – not only racial, national, gender or economic, not only groups special attention should be paid to, such as persons with disabilities, children war victims, rejected workers or domestic violence victims, but also minorities such as the left-handed, people with feet of different sizes or (like m) men who don’t drink alcohol and aren’t into football, said the director of ZagrebDox and added we are heading for a week full of films which will hopefully inspire more respect to diversities, which our society lacks. He concluded his speech with a thanks to all the partners, sponsors and media coverage providers. A special thanks to our golden sponsor Addiko Bank and our general sponsor Croatian Telecom, as well as the City of Zagreb and Croatian Audiovisual Centre for their support. Big thanks to our volunteers and the outstanding festival team, led by the main producer Lucija Parać, said Nenad Puhovski in conclusion.

Milan Bandić wished everyone a warm welcome to the 14th ZagrebDox, describing it as a festival of great importance for Zagreb and our film community. This festival has for years been contributing to the image of Zagreb as a cultural and travel destination, but apart from international visibility even more important is the job it does in our society, the awareness of the world we live in and the motivation to change it. Besides, its official sections develop new generations of documentary filmmakers to carry the torch of conveying the cruel but beautiful reality, said mayor Bandić and added that the City of Zagreb has been supporting this festival from the beginning as a remarkable showcase of Croatian and Zagreb culture. As a mayor I can say I am very proud of ZagrebDox and once again I extend my congratulations to the festival team on these 14 years and wish them an even more successful future. May our citizens have a best of times enjoying the films in the programme, said Bandić in conclusion and with these words officially opened the festival.

After the screening of Over the Limit, the audience was greeted by the film’s director Marta Prus, thanking the organisers for opening this year’s ZagrebDox with her film. She pointed out that she put her whole heart and soul into the making of this film, deciding to speak up about the demanding world of professional sport partly because she was also oce a rhythmic gymnast.

The 14th ZagrebDox festival closes on Sunday, 4 March and during the seven festival days it will be screening from 11am to 10pm.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Ivana Sansević E: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., M: 091 528 7605

Iris Mošnja E: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., M: 098 9309 609

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